Day Two - It's been a hard day's night (8)

It’s been a Hard Day’s night.

And I’ve been working like a dog. We were rudely awoken after the WORST nights sleep ever, well if you can even call it that considering I didn’t shut my eyes. At 4 AM, feeling like the walking dead we were up and the torture didn’t stop there.

Huge queues in the airport and 3 hours of waiting for a flight almost killed all of us. Theres only so much of the manchester accent I can take before I start going insane. The pain can be compared, if you watch big brother, to thousands of Corins EVERYWHERE. But nonetheless we fought on through the noise, had an amazing buffet breakfast, about the only good thing to have come out of our trip to Manchester.

The plane journey itself was... bearable. 9 hours and 20 minutes is a hell of a long time to do nothing, yet that’s what I did. I can never sleep on a plane so had to endure the little kids that surrounded me but I made it to America with almost an entire sudoku book completed and 2 more of my Sherlock Holmes’ scripts completed. I did feel a sense of achievement.

The most awkward thing was being lost in a hire car that your dad doesn’t know how to drive, when the sat nav doesn’t know where you’re going. It took 2 hours for a 45 minute journey including plenty of sightseeing and toll booths, one of which could come back to haunt us as we didn’t pay.

But we did eventually make it here to The Caribe Cove, which is new hence the reason very few people knew of it. It's located in Kissimmee and is really close to all the local attractions so I have no doubt we'll be out and about a lot which means plenty to talk about. Unlimited free use of internet, gym, pool and DVDs make this IDEAL for me. I have already made use of all the facilities and have not been disappointed.

Then finally a meal at my FAVOURITE place to eat EVER. Tony Roma’s on International Drive.

Having been to Florida, staying just up the road about 4 years ago now, I have very fond memories of the place, but none quite so as this place. They are a chain restaurant with a branch in kingston, but it’s not the same. Full racks of ribs with their amazing chips and their luxurious BBQ sauce that will give your taste buds an orgasm. Highly recommended should you want to come out here.

Trust me, come here, you’ll love it!!! I say this on the condition I’m coming with you :)

Day One - Manchester Madness

Well let’s say it’s been a far from ideal start.

By midday I had been in 3 different counties and that was before we’d even headed to Manchester!

It was almost 4 O’clock by the time by dad made it home and we began to make way here. We had started packing but still suffered that last minute rush as we made sure we had every little thing. I always feel hard done by whenever I’m running round like a headless chicken (Apologies for the typical cliche) and Hayley and Bradley (My brother and sister) just sit down and look innocent when they know full well theres plenty to be done. But nonetheless I worked my fingers to the bone with my parents and we eventually hit the road.

It is a well known fact that me and my sister aren’t exactly the best of pals for her complete lack of sympathy towards anything. I moved my hand, she makes a huge fuss over it. I cough, she makes a huge fuss over it. I try and sleep, well, you get the picture. This journey was no exception. The whole 3 and a half hours saw her moan and groan non-stop. This with the fact she must be completely deaf for the way she needs her ipod on full volume playing her trashy, chavvy music was enough to push me over the edge, had I not been knackered from the endless skype calls of the night before that ran over until 2:!5 this morning.

Fortunately my dad had allowed me to get spotify premium which allows me to have 3000 songs offline at any one time without any real downloads, proving the most cost effective method for me to get my music. Therefore I made sure I was getting my moneys worth, filling to the music limit and that was just enough to keep me going throughout the long, painstaking journey.

Then there was the matter of the hotel, at first look everything appeared lovely. A chalet like building with a lovely gym and swimming pool (which of course by the time we arrived at 7:30 pm we were unable to use) appeared the ideal place for us... if we were a family of 4. Instead there are 5 of us and we’ve been crammed into a room with would take 3 at a push. It’s far from ideal, not very comfortable, no internet connection (Hence why I’m uploading this later) and with a terrible TV, bringing the days of black and white to modern programmes.

The food was also pretty poor. Overcooked, overpriced, Tasteless and generally not very pleasant. Despite the best efforts of the waitresses (Whose accents I love for their originality) we were gonna be very disappointed and I almost feel sorry for them. But should they ever read them, I respect you for trying.

So Day one, not great, so things can only get better right?

I certainly hope so. But a lovely wake up call at 4.00am is not what I had been hoping for, but it does mean that at the time I’m writing this, Florida is only 14 hours away!!

The diary of a Florida Holiday maker.

Basically I have been fortunate to have brought my Mac with me in a bid to buy as much apple stuff as I can to optimise the experience and so when I'm sat down I thought I'd be productive and make up for my lack of tweets and Facebook statuses by posting this daily blog, inspires by my favourite family, the Shaytards (They're on Youtube should you wanna find 'em).

So as I'm away and not meant to be in communication I won't advertise until after wards but if you are lucky enough to read this, I hope you enjoy. We're here for 14 days so I will try and do one for you everyday and upload it the next day so I'm playing catch up but here we go! :)

HALLO spaceboy!

As you can see, blogging in full length isn't really my speciality and I only do it on the odd occasion (Well, once about a year ago...). But I felt what I saw yesterday deserved some credit and when you're play is blogged about by me, then you know that it must have been superb!

I am of course referring to 'Spaceboy' by PAFoster (Or Paul as I know him). The play itself had only ever been performed once before at a rehearsed reading in London, starring Tom Addy, A fellow riverside member, but unfortunately for reasons unknown to me right now, I wasn't able to go. However, last night marked the premiere, which me and a couple of friends were lucky enough to attend, to what I think is a play with SO much potential (I say that as in it should be west end material in my opinion). But what's the play about you ask? Well this is a bit of an overview for you:

Spaceboy
by
PAFoster

Part One – ‘If I Fall’

Single, self-employed Nathan falls for his next-door neighbour, thirty something Anna Walker.

But Anna has a painful past and a troubled teenage son; and when a local lad goes missing, Nathan’s new relationship is tested to the brink.

Part Two – ‘Moondust Will Cover Me’

Fifteen year old Hayden is a little confused and thinks he’s in love; and that would be fine, if his new found friend wasn’t hearing voices.

Inspired by the Major Tom Trio by David Bowie, the play was originally written as a 45 minute radio play, but in doing this task for his writing group, but in doing so he was forced to remove his favourite character Hayden, whose story we get to see in the second act which was added at a later stage. The play is written in the present continuous tense which only makes everything going on more naturalistic and vivid to me. I won't go into details about the play as I don't want to ruin it for any eager beavers who may with to watch the play today. If so here's the link with all the details.

It's not often you get to meet a writer let alone spend the day as his PA, a job which I took very seriously and fulfilled my duties as required. OK, that isn't true but I did have a great day and learnt a lot as well as having a fun day and visiting the sights of Woking, a not so exciting prospect on the face of it, but really was intriguing. And as an added reason to watch the play tonight, Paul is doing a Q+A session after the performance if you have any questions you may want to ask Paul about the play and writing in general

I'm also really excited about his future productions, which if you are interested in, can be discovered via his blog and everything here

Words really can't describe how good the play was and a lot of credit should also be given to the actors and directors of the performance from Peer Productions. Having spoken to Paul, he really felt you did his play a lot of justice and therefore you should be very proud of what you have produced.

And so as a leaving comment, in the words of David Bowie, Paul Foster you've really made the grade.